By Jon Diamond
Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto was not the only gambler in Imperial Japan’s military hierarchy. Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, appointed commander of the Imperial Japanese Army’s (IJA) 25th Army on November 2, 1941, to lead the invasion of Malaya and Singapore, also took risks to capture the prized British territory   More »

By Pat McTaggart
It was called Nordlicht, or Northern Lights. With Hitler’s drive toward Stalingrad in full swing, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW—German Armed Forces High Command) was also planning to end the almost year-long siege of Leningrad in a two-pronged attack to capture the city.
Failing to take Leningrad in 1941,   More »

By Maureen Holtz
During World War II, American women flocked to be a part of the war effort. They served as factory workers, government agency clerks, WAVES or WAACS, and artists copying propaganda posters. Many young women found that the American Red Cross offered non-nurses a unique opportunity. Jill Pitts Knappenberger   More »

By John J. Domagalski
General Alexander Patch had been thinking about moving some troops to the southwestern part of Guadalcanal since taking command of all American ground forces on the embattled island on December 9, 1942. Little more than a month later his soldiers were cautiously pushing the remaining Japanese troops   More »

By Michael Hull
As powerful, fast-moving German panzer and infantry columnsrampaged across Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and into northern France early in May 1940, the British held their breath and watched apprehensively from across the narrow English Channel.
The lightning “blitzkrieg” advance split the retreating French and British armies, and the outlook was   More »

By Michael D. Hull
When German dictator Adolf Hitler loosed his troops into Poland on Friday, September 1, 1939, he hoped that a lightning conquest would result in a negotiated peace with Great Britain and France.
Hitler’s previous territorial moves during the appeasement years had failed to provoke the two nations into   More »

By Jon Diamond
The British Army has had its share of religious zealots Serving in theupper echelons of command. These typically independent-minded soldiers, motivated largely by their spiritual belief, were in sharp contrast to those, as characterized by J.F.C. Fuller, who comprised a “strictly hierarchical army headed by largely unimaginative leaders   More »

By David H. Lippman
In the darkness, the two American submarines moved toward the hostile beach, inching carefully through badly marked waters. They surfaced well before dawn, and the Marine Raiders and submarine crews began bringing up rubber boats from below, inflating them on deck, installing outboard motors, and filling them   More »

By Sam McGowan
 Undoubtedly, the World War II aircraft type that attracts the most attention is the fighter plane. Yet, before the war, the U.S. Army Air Corps paid little attention to fighter development and tactics because its senior officers, with certain exceptions, would later lead the Army Air Forces with   More »

It was June 12, 1944 and Lt. Dick Winters was having serious trouble with his paratroopers in Easy Company. Tasked with attacking Carentan, along with other 101stAirborne Division units, only a handful of his men had followed Lt. Welsh of 1stPlatoon when the order came to move out. As a   More »